Read All About It
by Tolakasa
Summary: Preseries. Small towns might be boring, but sometimes, they offer the perfect opportunities to make birthdays special for little brothers.


**Read All About It**

Dean hated little towns. They were stuffed full of snobby people with no real grip on reality, people who thought a few years of living in the same house made them somehow superior to people who moved around.

That, and they were boring. Really boring. This town's main non-hunting entertainment involved a movie theater with really shitty security, and even though Dean hadn't bothered registering for school and had his days free, they weren't allowed to go hunting without Dad. He and Sam had seen all the recent releases for free.

To top it off, it was a _dry_ town. A dry _county_. He couldn't even buy beer to alleviate the boredom.

Dad was off on a hunt that, by the infrequent calls, promised to stretch past Sammy's birthday. Not that he'd remember. He generally only did because Dean stuck a note on the door for him. That meant that the birthday celebrations were all on Dean.

And, completely by accident, he found the perfect surprise for Sammy, the kind that made small-town hell worth it.

* * *

The newspaper looked a lot more like a bank office than Dean had expected. He'd expected something dark and crowded and possibly smoke-filled. 

Maybe Sammy was right and he _did_ watch too much TV.

The receptionist didn't seem to be all there; he had to explain what he wanted three times, and then she gave him a wedding form and an anniversary form before finally handing him the clipboard with a birthday announcement form. The pen she handed him looked like it had been the Tasmanian Devil's chewtoy. He was surprised it still worked.

He wrote so carefully and slowly that he damned near gave himself a cramp in his hand. He returned the clipboard to the desk, where the receptionist was smiling cheerfully at a dust mote. Dean was starting to suspect she wasn't all there. "Thanks!" she said, beaming at him and deftly disassembling form from clipboard and handing the form back to him. "Just step around to this counter and I'll call Michelle."

Okay. Why she had to call someone when the counter was five feet behind her— He stepped around her desk, and then saw that the station at the counter was empty, the computer turned off. Farther back, in the maze of half-height cubicles, a girl stood up and headed towards the front.

No, not quite _girl_; she had a few years on Dean. Probably right out of college. Birthday announcement duty sounded like something that you'd stick on the new guys. "Can I help you?" she asked—polite, but not particularly warm.

"I want to run this," he said, handing her the form.

She smiled. "Excellent handwriting."

"I was very careful." He thought she might be teasing him, but wasn't sure. He gave her his best grin.

It made her smile vanish, and almost all the friendliness went out of her eyes. Okay, wrong move. He wondered why.

"You have a picture?" He shook his head. "All right. This is Winchester, like the gun?"

"Like the gun."

She scanned what he'd written, and grinned again. "One suggestion—"

"What?"

"Maybe we should put 'he likes hunting _with_ his brother and Dad' instead of 'hunting his brother and Dad'?"

"Um. Yeah. Fix that." Something occurred to him. "That's not going to be weird, is it? Mentioning hunting?"

"Around here?" She chuckled. "Not at all. It's kind of refreshing to see a kid who's actually old enough for his license. After the millionth toddler in camo with a BB gun, you start looking for new—" She stopped. "You're the brother, aren't you?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry," she said, "we can only accept these if they're brought in by a parent or a grandparent."

"Our dad works late. I'm his brother, I swear I'm not playing a prank—"

She raised an eyebrow. Damn, she did skepticism well. "No offense, but whenever _my_ brother said that, I generally found dead birds on my pillows."

Oh, great. The long-lost connection between the Winchesters and the Addams Family. He should have known it would be hiding in the South somewhere. "Please," he said, dialing up the pathetic and wishing (not for the first time) that he and not Sammy had gotten the puppy-dog eyes. "We've never been in a town where this kind of thing was free and we almost never stay long enough for him to see his name in the paper."

She tapped her pen on the counter, then glanced around the room. "Tell you what," she said, with a conspiratorial grin, "how's your forgery?"

"My father hasn't seen any of our permission slips in years," he answered, grinning back, and scrawled _John Winchester_ on the bottom of the page.

"I can't guarantee it'll get in on that day, it depends on space and what else comes up," she said, looking over the form again, "but I'll do my best."

Dean grinned as he walked out of the office. Dad might be pissed, but it wasn't like this was blowing their cover. If anything, Dean could probably argue that acting like a regular family, with birthday announcements and everything, would make people _less_ suspicious of them. That was assuming that Dad got back in time to notice, anyway.

He couldn't wait to see the look on Sammy's face.

* * *

Sam overslept—someday, dammit, he was going to be able to afford a real alarm clock, one that didn't answer to _Dean_ and periodically get drunk and sleep late—and so it took him a little while to realize that his classmates were actually smiling at him instead of dodging his presence. A few of them actually spoke, though the words didn't sink in until he got to second period and his English teacher slipped him a folded piece of paper with "Happy Birthday" written inside in five colors of magic marker. 

He blinked, and reread it three times. How had she known? He never mentioned his birthday. Most years, by the time May came along, Dad had gotten spring fever and uprooted them for an early start on summer hunting. He thanked her after class, but she shooed him out before he could ask.

Bewildered, he headed for the library. He always spent break reading the local paper; it kept him out of the craziness in the halls and kept him from having to answer questions about why he didn't have money to buy junk food in the cafeteria like everybody else. Plus, sometimes, he found stuff that helped Dad and Dean and it got them off his case and onto a hunt for a few days.

"Happy birthday, Sam," the head librarian said as he folded himself into the comfy chair next to the newspaper rack.

What the _fuck?_

The answer was on page A13—the "lifestyles" page, which was pretty much a lot of advertising with just enough local press releases to justify calling it a news page and not a full-page ad. There wasn't much press space today, just about enough room for four of those silly birthday announcements they ran for kids.

Erik Smith, Michael Midfield, Tori Hughes...and Sam Winchester.

"Oh, Jesus," he groaned, and the librarian heard him and laughed.

* * *

The traditional birthday meal was Mexican, mainly because it was the first thing Dean had learned to cook after one of his teachers explained to him—very gently, mind—that vast quantities of Spaghettios, Chef Boyardee, and cereal did not a healthy diet make, and it didn't matter how much he insisted his little brother was perfectly healthy. The first time he'd managed an edible meal was for Sammy's fourth birthday, and ever since, he'd managed to find a stove he could borrow at the first of May. A few years ago, he'd stolen recipes from a Texas girl whose guacamole was so good it was nearly fatal and added guacamole and cheese dip to the menu. 

Dean had everything ready by the time he heard Sammy's oversized feet stomping across the porch. (Nice thing about the South: even crappy houses had porches.) "Dinner's ready," he shouted, hitting the microwave buttons to heat the cheese dip.

Sammy shuffled in, a book under his arm and a bundle of papers in his hand. "Dean, everybody—" He looked up, and froze. Dean swallowed a grin as Sammy took in the birthday announcements plastered everywhere—tacked to walls and cabinets and tablecloth, glued to cardboard for place cards, twisted into napkin rings. (He was particularly proud of that touch; Sammy always complained that they never had anything _special_.) His reaction was all Dean had hoped for.

"Happy birthday, Sammy," Dean said, and popped a chip loaded with guacamole into his mouth. The microwave beeped. He retrieved the cheese dip, set it on the table, and then set the cake box beside the dishes. "Dad's not here, so you want cake first, or tacos?" Sammy stared at him. "C'mon, I even got you the big candles." He held up two numeral candles, a 1 and a 4.

"I—it—"

"I think you're looking for 'thank you, Dean, you're the best big brother ever.'"

"How many copies of the paper did you _buy?_"

Dean laughed. "Didn't. Stole the one from the library and made lots of copies. Had a few dollars to spare." Sammy was still staring at him. "Dude, what is it? Am I turning green or something?"

"I got birthday cards," Sammy said quietly, setting the papers down. Now Dean could see that they were homemade cards, the kind of thing you did at the last minute. "Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Owens, and six from girls in my classes." He sounded kind of stunned. "And that gang of rednecks made me have lunch with them and wanted to talk hunting."

"Ghosts?"

"_Deer_, Dean. And squirrels and rabbits. That kind of thing."

"Well, if it was ghosts, we could have had them over for dinner or something. _Will_ you sit down? You're freaking me out."

Sammy sank into a chair. His eyes were still on the makeshift cards. "People wished me a happy birthday, Dean. They talked to me." He looked up, and he had the biggest, happiest smile that Dean had seen out of him in years. "Thanks, Dean."

"Hey, it's your birthday. Now, what are we eating first?"

"Cake," Sam said emphatically, and Dean laughed and lit the candles.

**_the end_**


End file.
